Airbus inaugurated a second aircraft delivery centre in Toulouse, France, on 15 September 2026, a facility built to hand over its best-selling A320 and A321 narrow-body jets to airline customers more quickly.
The project was announced less than a year earlier and moved ahead at a fast pace. Construction mobilised more than 700 workers and around 50 partner companies. Airbus did not disclose the total cost of the investment.
The new building extends the Jean-Luc Lagardere assembly plant in Blagnac, on the western edge of Toulouse, and works alongside Airbus's existing Henri Ziegler delivery centre. Unlike Ziegler, the new site covers more than 35,000 square metres and is dedicated exclusively to the A320 and A321, with sixteen positions for aircraft. Airbus currently holds more than 7,500 orders for aircraft in this family and wants to speed up deliveries to cut waiting times for airlines.
Testing and rework before handover
The site was designed to bring production, technical adjustments and customer delivery together in one place. After aircraft are assembled and fitted with cabins at the Blagnac plant, they now pass through a new ground-testing zone, where Airbus checks cabin pressurisation, fuel system leak-tightness and engine performance.
Airbus test pilots then carry out a rejected take-off, known in the industry as an RTO, on the runway at Toulouse-Blagnac airport, before the aircraft makes its first flight. If technical adjustments or rework are needed, a large hangar has been built nearby that can hold up to six single-aisle jets at the same time. Only once an aircraft has passed through these stages does it move to the delivery centre itself.
Bringing customers closer to their aircraft
Customers are received in a newly built dedicated space, alongside a customs clearance area for international deliveries. The layout was designed to give airline representatives a direct view of their aircraft from the work areas set aside for them.
Florent Massou dit Labaquere, Airbus's executive vice president of operations for commercial aircraft, said it was important for the customer and Airbus's teams to be as close as possible to the aircraft in order to work as efficiently as possible. He explained that a customer needs to see the cabin and its commercial fittings, walk around the exterior of the aircraft to confirm everything meets specification, and have one of their own pilots test-fly the jet before the financial transaction is completed and ownership is transferred.
Aiming for 75 jets a month by 2027
Airbus operates five delivery centres and ten A320 final assembly lines across Europe, China and the United States. Drawing on that network, the company intends to produce between 70 and 75 aircraft a month by the end of 2027, three quarters of them A321s.
Reaching that target depends partly on the transformation of the Jean-Luc Lagardere site, which was previously dedicated to the now-discontinued A380. Massou dit Labaquere said the site was being brought back to life and was opening up tremendous prospects for Toulouse.
Airbus's ten A320-family assembly lines are split between Toulouse, which has two lines, Hamburg, which has four, Tianjin in China, which has two, and Mobile, Alabama, which also has two.
